Comparative study of manual harvesting cum mechanical threshing and direct combining of wheat crop in bundelkhand region of UP

The conventional wheat threshing practice was more time and labour consuming and prone to weather hazard for these regions wheat grown farmer began to faster and less tedious ways to thresh wheat. So the effort were continued to develop machine for wheat threshing and in this process in 1950s, the Ludhiana thresher appeared, ushering Indian agriculture in to power thresher age. So there was a need to have a comparative study of manual wheat crop harvesting and its threshing using power wheat thresher system with that of combine harvesting system for their techno-economic adoption in Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh. The cost of manual harvesting using serrated edge sickle, gathering and transport including grain loss was 5975 Rs./ha. The cost of threshing using Sonalika 20 hp PTO operated thresher including grain loss was 4457.58 Rs./ha. The comparative cost of manual harvesting, gathering and transport cum mechanical threshing and direct combining of wheat crop at custom hire rate were 10432.58 Rs./ha and 14827.5 Rs./ha respectively, which showed that there was saving of 29.64% Rs. in traditional system with respect to combine harvesting. So the results obtained in Bundelkhand region of UP showed that the combine harvesting was economical if Bhusa was not a valuable cattle feed, scarcity of labour and uncertain weather condition existed in harvesting season and the early harvesting of crops helped in growing of another crop.